Replacing p4 prescott 530j 3.0ghz/e7221 copper river, 1gb ddr2, 4 port INTEL PRO

[mmlenz]

CPU P4/3 GHz 800M LGA775 530J PRESCOTT
CRUCIAL 240P 512MB DDR2 400
HD 80 GB|SEAGAT ST380817AS 8mb
INTEL PRO/1000 MT PWLA8494MT 4 port
BARESERVER SUPERMICRO|5014C-MFB RT

We have 2 of the above in a failover config and we need to replace them because one crapped the bed. :)  Any recommendations on a good 1U setup that uses 250 or less watts?  I'm guessing those pci-x intel cards are going to have to be replaced (ouch $$) as well.  We were able to move data from one segment to another in the 900mbs range with these and i'd like to stay there.

Are the atom based supermicros any good?  I'm guessing it wouldn't take much to out run the old single cpu prescotts does it?

[tirsojrp]

I doubt that even the fastest Atom could reach 600mbps. A Core i3 should be able to handle that plenty of room to spare.

[stephenw10]

Yep, Atom will be slower.
You almost couldn't buy a box that uses 250W currently (ridiculous gaming rigs aside). An i3 or i5 based system will be far less power hungry than that.
Yes you will have to replace the PCI-X cards but you could go for a pair of dual port PCIe cards depending on your enclosure choice.

Steve

[mmlenz]

We're going to try swapping out the PS and CPU in this supermicro.  I love these boxes, they have been awesome with pfsense.

If we can't go that route does anyone have any suggestions?  Even used hardware would be fine.

We do have spare Dell PE1850s that I know would work well (and we could reuse the pci-x cards) but I don't think I can spare the power and I'm not crazy about full depth 1U either.

EDIT:

Looks like there are several slightly older xeon based half depth supermicro servers available that support pci-x and only have 280w power supplies on ebay that are relatively cheap.

[mmlenz]

Been checking out some inexpensive used half depth 1u/280watt servers based on the following:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/xeon1333/5000v/x7dvl-e.cfm

I'd imagine any processor that goes into one of those would pretty much trounce the P4 in the current systems correct?

[stephenw10]

Yep, though perhaps not quite by as much as you think. If you look at the single thread performance, which is more relevant for pfSense, here: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

Intel Pentium 4 3.00GHz 660

Intel Xeon 5120 @ 1.86GHz 710

Intel Xeon 5160 @ 3.00GHz 1,175

Steve

[mmlenz]

As long as it's as fast as the old machine that is fine by me.  Thanks for the info Steve!

[francisuk22]

My Dell OptiPlex GX520 SFF
Intel Pentium 4 HT 3.00GHz
512MB
40GB SATA

100Mb peaks IDLE without traffic sharping
0% CPU
29% RAM
1% HDD

Full 100Mb peaks (Steam Diwnload) with traffic sharping
27% CPU
34% RAM
1% HDD

Onbroad Broadcom for LAN up to 1Gbps but my switch is only 100Mbits.
3com 100Mbits PCI slot for WAN